To the Editor:

Justin Schair’s editorial about the Constitution is filled with so many fallacies; I scarcely know where to begin. His first assumption is that the argument was sparked by the Massachusetts’s ruling, and it was sparked by religious conservatives. That is simply not true. The crux of the Massachusetts’s ruling is whether or not a court has the ability to force the legislature to enact a law; in other words, it’s just another case of flagrant judicial tyranny. Religion plays no part in the actual argument.

His second assumption is that the Constitution grants universal equality to all people, everywhere. That is beyond untrue. The Constitution does not have any opinion on what rights people explicitly have. If you actually read the amendments, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights only express what the federal government is not allowed to do. The rights of people come from nature itself (or, more specifically, and probably to Mr. Schair’s chagrin, God Himself).

Also, the Constitution recognizes equal rights, but it does not think that people are “equal.” If it were so, then it would explicitly say that all people are entitled to the exact same rights. But there are, instead, several parts of the Constitution that are discriminatory.

Noah Feldman obviously did not read the Constitution when he said that, as it stands, the Constitution discriminates against nobody. Yet, foreigners are not recognized by the Constitution, so people living in Belgium are not covered by it. Furthermore, the Constitution declares that people who are foreign-born may not run for President, pure discrimination right there.

Also, age discrimination appears, or else people of any age could vote or run for President. Of course, this entire argument is based on another massive fallacy, that discrimination is inherently bad. But society uses discrimination every day to set up laws and boundaries to protect itself. We discriminate against thieves, murderers, arsonists, slanderers, rapists, traitors, even people whom simply double park, we have laws that discriminate against such behavior. I’m sure speeders could come up with an argument as to why they should have the right to drive as fast as they want (even with the empty qualifier that they can “as long as they don’t hurt anyone”), but society at large doesn’t have to even entertain it.

Mr. Schair is alarmed at the prospect that we remain a religious society. I use the word “remain” because since even before there was a United States; the people who lived on this land were religious people. The government may be secular, but society does not have to abide by excessively secular, anti-religious sentiment from the government. If he’s worried that instituting hetero-only marriage will throw the country into a theocracy, he should take solace that government meddling in marriage has already turned the concept into a base, secular arrangement in its eyes.

The biggest fallacy of them all is that this issue is based on “rights,” specifically the “right” to marry. Such a right is not addressed in the Constitution, so at the very least it should be up to the individual states to decide what constitutes civil marriage. The reason this amendment is being proposed is to prevent gay marriage from being mandated throughout the country by the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The amendment would close off the forcible restructuring of civil marriage to recognize gay marriage, but would not close the door on the compromise of civil unions, which is something gay advocates should be working towards instead.

Marriage as an institution has always been reserved for heterosexual couples, just like how the Girl Scouts has always been reserved for girls and just like how the Catholic Church is reserved just for Catholics. That the government has any opinion on what marriage is is the real problem; the government should eliminate itself from the process altogether and let the people and religious authorities decide. However, if the government is going to meddle in marriage, then the people who comprise the government will decide, not the courts or rogue activist groups, what constitutes marriage, through voting and elections. If people want to change marriage, then it’ll be done, but otherwise this is not something that should be rammed down the nation’s throat.

Mr. Schair would do well to first read the Constitution and truly understand what it’s saying. It is not some pie-in-the-sky issuer of rights for every man, woman, and child. It is designed to bind the government from infringing on rights that actually exist, which you’ll see in the Bill of Rights. He would also do well to avoid irritating religious people by trying to destroy all religious ideas from the government (such as the Soviets did, and they didn’t stop there, either) and to avoid making up things that are suddenly rights, such as marriage. I believe those two precedents, which are very real, pose a greater threat to democracy and freedom then any protective measure born from insubordination ever could.

Sincerely,Adam LoBelia